Igor Kostin

He had captured the ongoing problems with contamination suffered by human beings and animals. His photos reportedly include those of the many animals born with deformities in the Chernobyl area, from his many incursions into the Zone of alienation to bring the problems to the attention of the world. Kostin died in Kyiv in 2015 at the age of 78 in a car accident. He was married to Alla Kostin.

After returning from Afghanistan, he began to work periodically for Novosti from the Kyiv branch. He reported on local and trans-Soviet matters but rarely left the state. On the late evening of 26 April 1986 a helicopter pilot whom he worked closely with for his journalistic activities alerted him that there had been a fire at the nuclear power plant in Chernobyl. The fire had been extinguished by the time they arrived at Chernobyl via helicopter, and witnessed a war-like scramble of military vehicles and power plant personnel down at the scene of the nuclear power plant. He also experienced an odd feeling combined with high temperature and toxic smog, that was unusual for an accident scene. The motor of his cameras began to exhibit symptoms of radioactive-caused degradation after around 20 shots. The helicopter returned to Kyiv after the cameras' failure.

Kostin managed to develop the films, only to realise that all but one was unsalvageable - most of the films were affected by the high level of radiation, that caused the photographs to appear entirely black, resembling a film that was exposed to light pre-maturely. Kostin's only photograph of the nuclear power plant was sent to Novosti in Moscow, but he did not receive a permit to publish it until 5 May 1986. His visit to Chernobyl was illegal and not sanctioned by the authorities. Pravda published limited information about the accident on 29 April 1986, but did not publish Kostin's photographs.

The accident was interpreted as a major catastrophe by the global news media, even when the Ukrainian and Soviet authorities were trying to suppress any news regarding the accident. Kostin later received permits as one of the representative of the five accredited Soviet media to cover the accident site and the Zone of Alienation. On 5 May, 1986, he ventured into the rubbles of the Chernobyl nuclear plant site and Reactor 4 along with the liquidators.

By the mid-1970s, Kostin had lost most interest in the construction industry, and was frustrated with the low fixed salary. He professed that he enjoyed photography, specifically portraitures, and won a gold medal for a portrait of his wife in Kyiv's annual photographic exhibition. He had subsequently entered into at least 80 such exhibitions and photographic road-shows throughout the world. Kostin's career as an amateur photographer earned him more than twice the amount of salary than his career as Chief of Construction in the Construction Bureau of Kyiv.

In 1959, upon being discharged from the army, Kostin began playing volleyball for Kishinev's regional sporting team. He then moved up the ladder to play for the Moldavian SSR team, subsequently becoming part of the Soviet national team, representing the union in international basketball competitions. In 1969, his sporting career ended with multiple spinal and knee injuries and complications from negligence of medical treatments. He began studying at the Agronomy Institute of Kishinev, and was employed as Senior Engineer for a construction firm in Kishinev. It was then he received a job offer at the Construction Bureau of Kyiv, in Ukraine.

In 1954, he began military service as a degenerated athletic youth in the army, where he was reformed and became a sapper. He revealed that on at least one occasion he was instructed to dig trenches along the Soviet border in anticipation of an American invasion. By the end of his service he grew more insubordinate and went absent without official leave adding seven months of military jail term to his three-year military service. His deputy commander assigned him the task of redecorating the "Leninrooms"—political meeting rooms of the barracks. His jail term was immediately commuted upon the completion of the job.

In August 1944, the Soviet Union re-established control over Moldavia, and drove the German and Romanian forces out of Moldavian SSR. The entrance of Soviet forces was ushered by aerial bombardment, and almost killed the Kostins, when a bomb obliterated their residence, when they hid under a bed. They later hid near a German armored vehicle, until Soviet forces entered the city.

From June 1941 onward, under German and Romanian occupation, Kostin was forced to feed on leftovers disposed by the Germans and better off Moldavians with his mother, Nadejda Popovitch, since his father was the sole breadwinner in the family, and there was widespread famine during the occupation. He and his mother frequently transported food such as borscht illegally to the German concentration camps around Kishinev for the Soviet prisoners of war. It was later revealed by Kostin in his photographic book that his mother hoped to find his father in the camps, only to realise later that his father was killed during a bombing years later.

Igor Fedorovich Kostin (27 December 1936 – 9 June 2015) was one of the five photographers in the world to take pictures of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster near Pripyat in Ukraine, on 26 April 1986. He was working for Novosti Press Agency (APN) as a photographer in Kyiv, Ukraine, when he represented Novosti to cover the nuclear accident in Chernobyl. Kostin's aerial view of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant was widely published around the world, showing the extent of the devastation, and triggering fear throughout the world of radioactivity contamination the accident caused, when the Soviet media was working to censor information regarding the accident, releasing limited information regarding the accident on 28 April 1986, until the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991.

Kostin was born in Bessarabia, in Greater Romania (present day in Moldova), on 27 December 1936, three years before his father, Féodor Kostin, an economist working in a bank, was sent to fight the war for the newly created Moldavian SSR, after Greater Romania was forced to cede Bessarabia to the Soviet Union under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. Before the cession, the Kostin family relocated to Kishinev, Moldavian ASSR (present day the capital city of Moldova, Chişinău). They subsequently resided in the suburb of Kishinev for the next thirty-two years, when his father was sent to the war.